A traveling wagon show that presented various entertainments between pitches for miracle medications or other products. They were most common in the Nineteenth Century, moving from town to town in the Midwest, South and Western United States.

These productions were usually sponsored by some sort of elixir or panacea, or "snake oil" to critics, that purportedly would cure a wide variety of ills. In addition to a Snake Oil Salesman, common acts included freak shows, stage magic, musicians, stand-up comedy and flea circuses. In many ways, the Medicine Show was the direct ancestor of commercial radio and television shows, free entertainment interrupted at regular intervals by advertisements.

Naturally, the visit of a medicine show was a highlight of the year for many isolated communities, and a certain number of sales were just made in an effort to get the wagon to come back the next year. (Others were based on the rather heavy alcohol content of most snake oil remedies.) As communications and entertainment options advanced and new truth in advertising laws were passed, the medicine shows dwindled away, finally passing away in 1951 with the end of the Hadacol Caravan in scandal.

Medicine shows sometimes appear in stories about The Wild West and similar areas of the time period—often there will be a comical bit where a shill in the crowd buys the snake oil and pretends to be cured of whatever ails him, but then must vomit up the foul stuff or otherwise dispose of the unswallowed medicine. Many fictional depictions will have the townsfolk being extremely gullible about the Snake Oil Salesman 's pitch and the protagonist being the only one who sees through the deception. For the wagon itself check out Mobile Kiosk.

Examples:

Audio Play

On the album Everything You Know Is Wrong by the comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre, the recording's narrator plays a wire recording of a medicine show featuring a "Dr. Firesign" promoting "Chief Dancing Knockout's Pyramid Pushover Paste" and "Don Bruhaha's Inca Hell-Oil Tonic".

There was an episode featuring this in the TV show, Little House on the Prairie - with a mistreated mute boy roadie, who Jenny Ingalls helps to escape.

The Goodies performed a scene as part of "The Goodies Travelling Medicine Show" in the episode "Hospital For Hire". The scene included a plant from the audience (Tim) being pulled from the audience to 'prove' that the mystery elixir cured all ailments.

On Good Eats, Alton does one of these while promoting celery water (water infused with celery seed, sweetened with "simple syrup") which really was touted as a Spice Rack Panacea at one time.

In Oregon Trail II, there's Dr. Brogan Cavanaugh, an NPC who shows up randomly in towns selling his brand of snake oil. You can't actually buy it, of course, and the "show" is very limited. He also shows up on a Wanted Poster.

In Kingdom of Loathing, we have Doc Galaktik's Medicine Show, though this is always in the same space, all the time. Unlike most snake oils, Dr. Galaktik's products actually work - despite the ingredients being fraudwort, shysterweed, and swindleblossoms. Perhaps it's the placebo effect?

It's not always there, mind you. During the Zombie Slayer challenge path, Doc Galaktik has taken advantage of how his show's in a wagon and ditched Seaside Town completely.

You're forced to help out one of these guys in Red Dead Redemption, to the point where it becomes an Overly Long Gag because it always ends with you driving away from the scene with a posse of angry people in hot pursuit, shooting at you.

The Simpsons do this in "Grandpa Simpson vs. Sexual Inadequacy". It backfires when the townspeople notice that the shill - Homer - is shown in a massive portrait on the front of the bottle.

Ironically the product is completely genuine, they just end up convincing the townsfolk otherwise. Springfield itself has ground to a standstill because all the grownups are at home taking advantage of the product.

One episode of Gummi Bears featured a medicine show cast in a rare sympathetic light: the proprietor is genuinely trying to make his elixir do exactly what he says it will, but his efforts inevitably end in failure (and plenty of angry customers). A well-intentioned Tummi tries to help him by slipping some Gummiberry Juice into the mix, which gives the man's customers temporary super strength and attracts Duke Igthorn's attention. In the end, the man finally finds the success he's been looking for when he inadvertently discovers that his normal elixir makes plants grow like crazy - he makes his fortune selling it as fertilizer. (Could be a Stealth Pun, considering what one might call the claims made by the usual salesmen.)

The Thundercats get involved with a medicine show in the ThunderCats (2011) episode "Recipe for Disaster".

When Flim and Flam, the twin unicorn con-artists from season 2 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic returned in the season 4 episode "Leap of Faith", they've given up their former cider-racket to instead run one of these.

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